What should your country do when facing a crippling addiction problem? Invest in education, prevention programs, treatment and mental health care, or maybe tackle the root problem? Nah; just ban the substance 4Head.
4Head (ˈfȯr-ˌhed) – noun: making an obvious and seemingly logical statement. Ex: Just don’t lose 4Head.
Not only is this demonstrably one of the worst possible approaches, now China’s got the bright idea of banning online video games. Well, more aptly, heavily restrict.
China is currently enacting a policy to limit online gaming use of minors under the age of 18.
First, let me dispel this myth: gaming, along with anything else, can be addictive. Although internet gaming is considered addictive under the DSM-5, the most widely accepted American psychological text, anything can be addictive. Just because something is too niche, new or understudied doesn’t mean it’s completely harmless.
With that said, China, along with many other east-asian countries like South Korea and Japan, has a massive problem with kids spending too much time behind a monitor.
However, unlike other countries which have mild provisions like periodically flashing a warning message advising people to take a break, China has gone full authoritarian… again.
Warning messages in many games in Korea like League of Legends periodically appear saying “Excessive gaming can interfere with normal daily life. [x hours] have passed since using League of Legends.”
Oh by the way, criticizing China is my new hobby, so enjoy the rants.
China is in the process of enacting regulations which limit minors under the age of 18 to 90 minutes of online gaming during the weekdays, three hours during weekends and holidays, completely forbid online gaming between 10:00 PM through 8:00 AM and a few other regulations which I actually agree with.
And honestly, I like the explicit spirit of this policy. I appreciate the law’s stated goal of curbing gaming addiction and setting guidelines in place. But outwardly banning addictive substances doesn’t f… flamingoing work and it seems that only Europe has learned this lesson.
So firstly, I think age restrictions are fairly arbitrary. To avoid writing two pages on moral relativism, basically your status in life is a much better indicator of maturity. For example, it seems like a 17-year-old living on their own and attending college is more mature than a 19-year-old who failed their senior year of high school twice.
This is why in America we hear the complaint that 18-year-olds can go overseas and kill our enemies, but aren’t old enough to buy a beer.
There are a ton more examples I have, but we’ll save that for a potential future article.
So, with that said, I feel like setting regulations based on what year of school you’re in is probably better. Once again with the age example, it seems like a 17-year-old who’s been helping with his parents’ farm after school and has finished all his homework deserves more than 90 minutes of Fortnite.
And what the hell is all this about three hours on the weekends? What does the government expect me to do for the other 13 hours I’m awake? Study? Go outside? I just wanna grind LP man.
Memes aside, no wait, and I can’t stay up past 10:00 PM on a Saturday to do a raid? Screw the Hong Kong protestors, gamers are the most oppressed group in China.
Okay; in all seriousness, other than the restrictions being ridiculous, this is an unenforceable fiesta of a policy.
Firstly, this doesn’t apply at all to offline games or games that have an offline mode. I guess just playing online is addictive. I guess social media, movies and the rest of the internet aren’t addictive either, it’s just specifically video games.
Secondly, you can just log in with someone else’s account. Just share the account info with your brother. Oh wait, you can’t because of the one child policy, which, along with these gaming restrictions, is an awful, non-means-tested policy that Xi Jinping, the same guy that banned Winnie the Pooh, just came up with.
Apparently, China’s supreme leader president Xi Jinping looks like Winnie the Pooh.
Like I said, I like the spirit of limiting online access of minors. There’s even a provision to limit the maximum monthly amount minors can spend on cosmetics and loot boxes.
However, I think social pressure and moral guidance from the government is a better option.
I get the sense Chinese citizens think laws mirror morality more than other populations, which means parents may enforce this more than the government.
And that’s the point. Instead of spending billions on controlling the exact amount of time kids spend farming gold, just make an infomercial telling parents the ideal limit is 90 minutes. That way there’s more flexibility, better enforcement and we can maybe spend the billions of dollars on planting even more trees. Good job on that by the way.
This way, I can tell my mom to give me five more minutes, because if someone disconnects from my League of Legends game because of state-sponsored Orwellian bans on technology, I may start shouting “Liberate gamers, the revolution of our times!”
